December 02, 2012

Talk by Christina Papageorgopoulou on Mesolithic/Neolithic Greek DNA

The talk is in Greek but the slides are mostly in English. This is related to the BEAN Project which I have covered before in this blog.

She discusses various aspects of DNA preservation (poorer than Central Europe/Siberia due to higher temperature, and potentially because non-freshly excavated samples were tested) which appears to be variable across sites.

A screenshot of haplogroups detected so far (X, K, J, H, T). Interestingly, the X haplogroup only comes from Franchthi cave, although Dr. Papageorgopoulou cautions against very simple interpretations of this fact.

She mentions a complete absence of haplogroup U in all her samples so far (either Mesolithic or Neolithic), in contrast to Central European Mesolithic samples where it predominates.

Fst values between Greek Mesolithic/Neolithic samples and Central European Mesolithic ones are high (~0.2), but with Linearbandkeramik they are very low (0.03-0.05).

I'm looking forward to the first publication of these important results, and hopefully they will be soon supplemented with results from Bulgaria and Anatolia that are also to be studied as part of the BEAN Project.

Fascinating study! Definitely look at the video--the slides are informative. The presence of mtDNA haplogroup X in Mesolithic Franchthi Cave leads one to wonder whether the Mesolithic hunter-fisher-foragers migrated from the Levant (haplogroup X is diverse and frequent among the Druze of Galilee, and Lake Galilee was a refugium during the LGM) to Greece and continued to be seafarers from Franchthi. The ?Mesolithic from Theopetra Cave may also have contributed ultimately to the LBK demography.

As I have mentioned numerous times, one has to be very careful in ascribing central European neolithic haplogroups to some Anatolian or other near-Eastern first farmers. Firstly, I am not sure that southern Balkan/Greek and NW Anatolian haplogroups at the transition to the Neolithic were different, in the first place, while the middle/lower Danubian area and Northern Europe likely harbored different groups.

So, I am not surprised that LBK and Mesolithic Greece are rather similar: whatever little difference Anatolian farmers (or those traveling through/ along the shorelines of Anatolia) had, got further diluted in Greece, but then probably additional haplogroups were picked up in the Danubian area, and admixture with northern HGs, as we know, was a slow process.

So, as I have always said, LBK haplogroups are most likely mostly Mesolithic Balkan. And Northern European UP and Mesolithic haplogroups were most likely rather different from Mediterranean ones.

So what if they were from the Southern Balkans? Their mtDNA frequencies look Near Eastern.

It seems there wasn't much of a difference between Southern Europe and the Near East during the Mesolithic. But there seems to have been a pretty big different between Southern and Central Europe back then.

"The presence of mtDNA haplogroup X in Mesolithic Franchthi Cave leads one to wonder whether the Mesolithic hunter-fisher-foragers migrated from the Levant (haplogroup X is diverse and frequent among the Druze of Galilee, and Lake Galilee was a refugium during the LGM) to Greece and continued to be seafarers from Franchthi."

I believe so; and I think that's how some of the "X" (and other closely related) clades came to North America: aboard ships or large boats. I think that's why they're associated with Western (ie Atlantean) European seafarers, too (Basques, Vikings, Celts, etc.).

Some of them might also have travelled overland with R1b1a2, but were eventually, naturally attracted to the coastal areas of Europe.

The Y-chromosome distinction between the Greek sites is significant as it mirrors other differences between the first farmers of north and south Greece. The implications are that distinct populations may have in part underwritten the regional differences witnessed in the establishment of farming economies. King 2008-Differential Y-chromosome Anatolian Influences on the Greek and Cretan Neolithic

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